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Suharto’s crimes against humanity

5 January 2008

The name of Suharto who ruled Indonesia with an iron fist for thirty-three years has recently been filling the air waves. More than nine years after his fall from power, the United Nations and the World Bank named him as the world’s most corrupt former head of state. Under their Stolen Assets Recovery Initiative, they estimate that the amount he stole from the people of Indonesia during his reign of terror is somewhere between $15 billion and $35 billion.

While people may justifiably gasp at the enormity of Suharto’s greed, it is well to remember that looting his country’s wealth is certainly not the worst crime for which his name should be recorded in the annals of world history.

During his more that three decades in power, Suharto was responsible for crimes against humanity on an unprecedented scale for which he has never been brought to account. Killings, torture, involuntary disappearances, rape and prolonged detention without trial were his major contribution to the sufferings inflicted on the people of Indonesia and East Timor, from the moment he took power in Indonesia in late 1965.

These gross violations of international criminal law are matters to which the UN and the World Bank should be drawing attention.

Nationwide massacres 1965-1966
First and foremost were the nationwide massacres that swept the country between late October 1965 and March 1966. Hundreds of thousands of people died, with estimates ranging anywhere between 78,000 and one million. A commission set up in December 1965 by President Sukarno when the killings had not yet reached their halfway mark came up with a figure of 78,000 dead. But a member of the commission later interviewed by an American journalist said he believed that the true figure was ten times higher. ‘On Bali they gave us a death figure of 10,000,’ the commission member is quoted as saying, ‘I believe it was nearer 100,000. There was covering up elsewhere too. So I calculate that about ten times as many people were killed as we actually reported.’ [John Hughes, The End of Sukarno, Angus and Robertson, 1967]

Nearly a decade after Suharto was installed as president, Amnesty International estimated that some 70,000 political prisoners were still being held without trial. It was not until 1979 that they were all finally released. Of the hundreds of thousands who were incarcerated in October 1965, many thousands are known to have died as a result of torture, untreated diseases and malnutrition; these men and women also suffered years of separation from their families. No fewer than 13,000 men were exiled to the remote and inhospitable island of Buru and hundreds of women were banished to Plantungan camp in Central Java.

The occupation of East Timor
The invasion of East Timor (now Timor-Leste) in December 1975 and the occupation which lasted for 24 years decimated the population of this small nation whose misfortune was to have a common border with Indonesian West Timor. An investigation conducted from 2002 till 2005 by the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation, known by its Portuguese acronym, CAVR, concluded that the number of conflict-related deaths was between 102,000 and 183,000. This amounted to more than a quarter of East Timor’s population of around 600,000 at the time of the invasion.

Death squads as shock therapy
Then there were the death squads which waged a campaign of ‘shock therapy’ in a so-called anti-crime operation. For a period of at least six months in 1983, the Indonesian military took part in death squads which went on the rampage, killing alleged criminals or bandits. This resulted in the deaths of an estimated three thousand people. The killings occurred in a number of cities throughout the land and came to be known as petrus or ‘mysterious killings’. The precise number of victims was never established because the Indonesian media was prohibited from reporting the killings. In September 1983, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported that the killings were ‘set to continue until the authorities have reached their countrywide target reliably put at 4,000 extra-judicial killings’.

Suharto took personal responsibility for these killings in his autobiography, Suharto: Pikiran, Ucapan dan Tindakan Saya (Suharto: My Thoughts, Sayings and Deeds) in which he wrote: ‘The newspapers were full of articles about the mysterious deaths of a number of people…. There was nothing mysterious about it at all. Was it right to do nothing? It had to be treated by violence. But this did not mean just going out and shooting people, bang, bang. No. But those who tried to resist, like it or not, had to be shot. Because they resisted, they were shot.’

It is noteworthy that this is only crime which Suharto has publicly acknowledged.

Aceh and West Papua
From 1976, the people of Aceh, the western-most province of Indonesia, experienced a campaign of unrestrained killings when the region was designated a ‘military operations region’ (Daerah Operasi Militer) after the establishment of GAM (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka) in 1976 which sought to create a separate state. While some of the victims were killed during military operations, the vast majority of those who were struck down were unarmed civilians.

In 1965, after Indonesia had taken control of West Papua from the Dutch, crack troops of the military were sent to the region to crush an independence movement known as the OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, Free Papua Organisation). This resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the following decades, especially after the so-called Act of Free Choice in August 1969 when just over a thousand Papuans took part in that fraudulent Act, sealing the territory’s fate as a province of Indonesia. Here too, the territory was designated as a special military area or DOM, giving the military free rein to capture, kill or maim people deemed to be in favour of independence.

Foreign investments predominate
Once Suharto had seized power, foreign investors took advantage of the change in government to invest heavily in resource-rich Indonesia. Despite the horrific incidents that occurred during the more than three decades of Suharto’s grip on power, Indonesia evaded condemnation by the international community, unlike Cambodia which came to be known as the ‘killing fields’, under the despot Pol Pot.

Ultimately, it was the international financial crisis of 1997-98 that brought the Indonesian economy to its knees, paving the way for an upsurge in protest against the dictator. As the crisis deepened, nationwide anti-Suharto demonstrations erupted, eventually forcing him to resign in May, 1998.

Safer to stay at home
After his resignation, Suharto retired to the family’s luxurious home in Jakarta. A few months later, an incident involving the Chilean dictator General Pinochet came as a warning to Suharto about what could happen to him were he to venture abroad. In October 1998, while Pinochet was on a visit to London, a Spanish magistrate sought his extradition to face charges of crimes against humanity committed during his reign of terror in Chile. Pinochet was holed up in the UK until March 2000 when Foreign Secretary Jack Straw decided to set aside the extradition request and allow him to return to Chile. The significance of this widely reported process was not lost on Suharto. This certainly explains why he has refrained from travelling abroad ever since.

After his resignation, subsequent governments were under pressure to assess the wealth that he and his family had accumulated, all of which has apparently been placed in the hands of his offspring and relatives. In 1999, he sued TIME magazine for publishing an article ‘Suharto Inc: The Family Firm’ which alleged that he had accumulated $15 billion during his presidency. The case was rejected by two lower courts but in a highly contentious verdict by Indonesia’s Supreme Court, the decision was reversed in September 2007 and TIME was ordered to pay US$106 million in compensation.

By the time he was forced out in the financial chaos of 1998, Suharto and his family controlled hotels, toll roads, airlines and TV stations across the country. The World Bank — citing figures compiled in 2004 by Transparency International, a non-partisan global organization battling corruption, estimated his assets at between $15 billion to $35 billion in a country with an economy of $86 billion. [New York Times, 29 December 2007]

A blow for democracy and press freedom
Following the Supreme Court decision, Mulya Lubis, the lawyer who acted for TIME, was quoted as saying: ‘Supporters of Suharto are still within the government, within parliament, within the judiciary and within the business of society. They are not so strong as in the past but they are still there. The Supreme Court decision is really a blow for democracy and for the freedom of the press.’ (VOA, 13 September 2007).

Following the shock verdict, TIME magazine vowed to fight an Indonesian court decision.

"We are extremely disappointed with the Indonesian Supreme Court's decision. TIME will use every avenue available to fight for the defense of press freedoms," the magazine said in a statement. "We will challenge this judgment by filing with the court a petition for review," its only remaining legal option, it added, describing the ruling as a blow both for the magazine and for the rights of a free press in Indonesia.

"The growth of democratic institutions in Indonesia over the past few years has been inspiring, but the Supreme Court's decision is stark evidence that the strength of such institutions cannot be taken for granted, and, indeed, that they are still under threat."

Within days of the Supreme Court decision, the UN and the World Bank announced their StAR Initiative, naming Suharto as the most corrupt former head of state.

There have been several attempts to bring Suharto to court on corruption charges but his lawyers have been able to protect him against ever having to appear in court on the grounds of ill-health, even though he has often been seen in apparent good health, attending family events in various parts of the country. Events have proved all too conclusively that Indonesia’s former dictator, with so much blood on his hands, is untouchable, even for the lesser crime of corruption, as long as he stays at home.

As Professor Benedict Anderson, a leading scholar of Indonesia, has said: ‘The extent of Suharto’s corruption is so huge, it could take sixty years to trace all his wealth. All this fuss about money stolen by Suharto while ignoring his political crimes is like making a fuss about Hitler’s taste in jack fruit, while ignoring his mass murders. It is out of all proportion.’

Tommy Suharto’s billions
In another sign that forces favourable to Suharto still exert influence in Indonesia, his son Tommy was freed from prison last year after serving just a third of the 15-year jail term he was handed in July 2002 for ordering the murder of a Supreme Court judge. Commentators describe this as the most stunning example of remission in the country’s legal history. The assassination of the judge followed a verdict he had passed against Tommy, sentencing him to 18 months in prison for a multimillion-dollar land scam.

However, following a reshuffle in the cabinet of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesian prosecutors named Tommy Suharto as a suspect in a 175 billion rupiah ($19 million) graft case involving a lucrative clove monopoly he secured while his father was in power. The move came after President Yudhoyono named a new attorney-general and dropped the justice minister in the reshuffle, aimed at re-invigorating his campaign against endemic corruption. [Reuters, 19 July 2007]

It remains to be seen whether these efforts to claw back some of the billions stolen by Suharto’s offspring will bear fruit.